Official Selection: Viennale, Milano, Munich, & San Francisco Film Festivals

Winner:

2016 Hivos Tiger Award for Best Picture – 45th Rotterdam International Film Festival

Best Director & Special Jury Mention – 2016 Seattle International Film Festival

Best Director – Andrey Tarkovsky Film Festival, Russia

Best Actor – Durban International Film Festival

Radio Dreams creates the odd yet very real world of PARS-FM – a Farsi-language radio station broadcasting from the heart of San Francisco. The story unfolds over a single day as the station’s program manager, Hamid – a brilliant, misunderstood Iranian writer (played by the “Iranian Bob Dylan” Mohsen Namjoo) – prepares for a triumphant broadcast – a live performance pairing Metallica and Kabul Dreams, Afghanistan’s first rock band. Meanwhile, Hamid must juggle a dysfunctional mix of on-air talent, station managers, and performers while fending off the owner’s plans to wrest control of the station.

Radio Dreams, the newest feature film from Iranian-British director Babak Jalali (Frontier Blues), brings to life the sometimes bizarre experience of immigrants pursuing dreams in the U.S. with a perfect mixture of honesty, art, and socio-political topicality served up in an ingenious, offbeat transmission. (c) Matson Films

A culture-clash charmer…Visually striking throughout….warm-hearted but tough-edged…Presenting a nuanced, intelligent and consistently droll take on hot-button subjects of immigration, identity and cultural assimilation
Neil Young | Hollywood Reporter | Full review